phrase, “the wells of power,” the oil resources of the Middle East
in general and of the Gulf and the Arabian peninsula in particular.
For a variety reasons he facilitated, then welcomed the partition of
India into successor states, India and Pakistan.. Indian
independence was expected to bring the anti-imperialist Jawaharlal
Nehru to power, an eventuality that Caroe feared not least because
Nehru couldn’t be trusted
to use the diplomatic and military
resources of an independent India to secure Middle East oil for
British use and, more broadly, for the use of the Atlanticist world
of America and Europe.
Caroe was attracted to Jinnah’s theory of two nations and to
his plan to partition the subcontinent into a Muslim Pakistan and a
Hindu India. Like Kipling before him, Caroe was attracted to
Muslim character and culture
and sympathized with Mohammed
Ali Jinnah’s call for a Muslim state on the sub-continent. A Jinnah
led Pakistan would be a more suitable vehicle to help secure the
12
.
Caroe served as Governor of the Northwest Frontier Province
[NWFP] in 1946 -47. Caroe wrote to Lord Wavell, the Viceroy, that
Jawaharlal Nehru, then the acting prime minister of an interim government,
was lucky not to have been killed by Muslim League activists and the tribal
followers of the Mullah of Manki when, as minister of tribal relations, he
toured the NWFP. Caroe told the viceroy that he made no effort to restrain
the Mullah and the League. Because Nehru’s tour “was obviously designed
to push the Congress cause” and to have done so “would certainly have led
to disturbances.” Caroe to Wavell, 23 October 1946, as quoted and cited in
Anita Inder Singh, The Origins of the Partition of India, 1936 -1947 in The
Partition Omnbus [New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002]. P. 204.
13
.
Caroe’s admiration for Muslim India, particularly the Pathans of the
NWFP, was expressed in his book, The Pathans, 550 B. C. – A. D. 1957.
9
Convention